the riches of Christ, have within their hearts the desire and impulse to bear witness of Christ. This is, after all, the telling, the true and reliable motive. In other words, the Gospel is a missionary power and would impel to mission work, even though Christ had not given the explicit missionary command. The fact that He, the great Teacher, gave the command, shows that it is not superfluous. Christians need it in order to understand more fully the Lord's will, and because of the infirmities of the flesh.

Take for example, the doctrine of sin. This doctrine is not popular today. It is practically ruled out of consideration from many pulpits and churches. But these only add their testimony to the prevalence and the fearful ravages of sin. All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Sin is in the world, and death by sin. Without the Gospel of the grace of God mankind is involved in helpless, hopeless ruin. Those who laugh at this doctrine as old fogyism, an exploded theory of antiquity, see no need of missions and have no use for them. That is as natural as it is pitiable. But those who believe the Biblical doctrine of sin, and have themselves been saved by grace, are bound and impelled in proportion to the reality and the intensity of their conviction and experience, to extend a helping hand to those who are perishing in sin.

There are those who endeavor to minimize the faults and evils of heathenism and to magnify the virtues of their religions and their ethical and philosophical systems. It is a fruitless and a thankless task. The testimony of trustworthy witnesses, Christian scholars, missionaries, travelers, and officials, to the evils of heathenism and the insufficiency and failure of all nonChristian religions is convincing and overwhelming. To

give but a single one out of hundreds, note what John R. Mott says on the basis of his own extended observation: "The need of the non-Christian world is indescribably great. * * * See under what a burden of sin and sorrow and suffering they live. Can any candid person doubt the reality of the awful need after reviewing the masterly, scientific survey by Dr. Dennis of the social evils of the non-Christian world? No one who has seen the actual conditions can question that they who are without God are also without hope." "Having no hope, and without God in the world." Those to whom this is a true description of heathenism will be impelled to activity by the missionary motive that filled the heart of Christ when He said: "I have compassion on the multitude, because they are as sheep having no shepherd."

So we may study the missionary thoughts involved in the doctrine of the Church.

The Church is the divinely established institution for the propagation of Christianity. This is its plain and distinctive mision. There are voluntary and arbitrary societies of men who unite for certain purposes and arrogate to themselves the performance of functions which properly belong to the Church. The Church, from the standpoint of its essential character, is the communion or congregation of true believers in Christ. Wherever these gather about the administration of the divinely appointed means of grace, the Word of God and the sacraments, Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper, there the Church appears as the congre

'The Evangelization of the World in this Generation, p. 17. Cf. Christian Missions and Social Progress, by Dennis, Vol. I; Non-Christian Religions of the World, papers by Muir, Legge, and others; and Religions of Mission Fields as viewed by Missionaries.

gation or association of men for the performance of the work which the Lord has given His people to do. That work consists in spreading the leaven of the Gospel throughout the earth and thus building up and extending the kingdom of God in all the world; in making disciples, winning souls for Christ, and gathering them into churches for the maintenance and continuation of the work. "The Word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied," is the condensed record of the work in the apostolic Church.

The Church is misionary by birth: it is the product of missionary effort and has an inborn missionary character. The Church is missionary by appointment: this is implied in many passages of Scripture and expressly stated in the Great Commission. The Church is missionary by inner necessity: self-preservation demands it. Propagation in order to perpetuation of life is an organic law in all the realms of living creatures, in nature and in grace. By scattering, the seed is increased; by giving, new blessings are received; by laboring, health is conserved and life prolonged. In accordance with this principle of life and growth the churches that actively engage in mission. work enjoy reflex blessings which they would otherwise forego.

In a similar manner all the fundamental truths of salvation have a direct bearing upon the missionary enterprise. We will close, however, with a brief reference to Christ's second advent and the final judgment. Both presuppose the universal offer of salvation by the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world. Christ expressly states that before the end of the world, when He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead, there shall be a world-wide proclamation of the Gospel

for a witness unto all nations. According to the uniform teaching of Scripture the interval of time elapsing between His return to the Father and His second advent in the glory of heaven to exercise the authority of Judge of those whom He has redeemed, is the period of missions, the time for working while it is day-the day of grace, before the night of the judgment descends to usher in the eternal day of the Church Triumphant, the kingdom of glory.

In this, as in other topics, it is only a source of weakening and loss to allow speculative questions to thrust themselves in and encroach upon and gradually reduce and enfeeble the work which the Lord of the harvest and the Judge of all has laid upon His Church as an urgent and an indispensable task-that of preaching the Gospel of the kingdom in all the world for a witness unto all nations.

III. The Purpose and Aim of Missions.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CHIEF AND DOMINATING AIM.

Much confusion prevails on this topic in missionary literature, owing to misapprehension of the true purpose of Christian missions as also to divergent meanings attached to terms and phrases that are used. This makes it all the more imperative to examine the subject carefully so as to distinguish properly between the aim and the results of missions, between what is essential and what is incidental, between the chief blessings of Christ's redemption which abide forever and its subsidiary blessings which are temporal.

I. The Real Aim of Missions is Salvation from Sin and Death.

This is old-fashioned doctrine that seems out of date when compared with the pretentious aims and claims of some treatises on modern "Christian Socialism." But we prefer to live and die by "the preaching of the cross,' 991 as we are firmly convinced that the missionary enterprise will live and thrive upon it, while it will perish without it. The salvation which Christ came to accomplish for mankind has reference to the whole man, body and soul, in time and for eternity. It does not ignore the ills and aches, the needs and in

'Read and meditate upon the first chapter of St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

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